We invite paper proposals for a session at the EAUH 2016 on how cities have transformed and made use of the natural environment since 1500:
Urban environmental history, while having elaborated major aspects of physical transformation of nature due to industrial urbanization and the ‘networking of cities’, has tended to mark off rather sharply the modern period of technology-driven transformations of urban nature from pre-industrial societies, which were often depicted as being rather undisturbed and pristine. Meanwhile, also for the early modern (and medieval) period, the pervasiveness of environmental changes effected in and through cities has been highlighted (Barles, Joergensen, Knoll et al.), and the singularity of the caesura linked with the transition to fossil fuels has been challenged. On the other hand, recent literature on the Anthropocene – the human-dominated geological epoch (Steffen, Crutzen, McNeill et al.) - once again claims a profound rupture in human/nature relations between the pre-modern and the modern.
In the light of these conflicting perspectives, the aim of this session will be to bridge the traditional gap between historiographical approaches analyzing the transformation of the urban environment for the early modern and the modern period. Papers presented in this session could apply concepts such as urban metabolism, ANT or ‘socio-natural sites’ (Winiwarter, Schmid, Schatzki et al.) - all starting from the permanent ‘coproduction’ of the social and the natural. They should aim to tease out continuities and ruptures in technologies as well as scientific concepts and popular assumptions, to highlight power relations which were linked and altered by new ways of organizing and safeguarding urban metabolism. They should ask for path dependencies, which developed unwillingly and unwittingly, only to confront urban societies as new challenges and materialized manifestations of former decisions. Further questions should address issues such as
- when and how did cities become the dominant places, where new society-nature relations originate?
- How did the urban ‘production of nature’ differ from the non-urban?
The sessions further develops an international and interdisciplinary discourse on ‘Urban Agency’ which has been conducted over the last years and will present some results of this research initiative. We will concentrate on European cities between 1500-2000 and encourage submissions with an international and cross-epoch focus.
To submit a paper proposal, please create a user account on the conference management system1 and upload your abstract (max. 300 words) to Session M15.
You may, if you wish, discuss your proposals with the session organizers in advance of formal submission: Dieter Schott (schott[at]pg.tu-darmstadt.de); Tim Soens (Tim.Soens[at]uantwerpen.be).
- 1. https://eauh2016.net/programme/call-for-papers/